Boeing Co said on Thursday it was pausing deliveries of its 737 MAX aircraft to customers following the grounding of the jetliner around the world, as the world's largest planemaker responds to its worst crises in years.

The 737 MAX has been banned from flying in most countries after an Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed all 157 people on board. This was a second deadly incident involving the relatively new Boeing model in five months. In October, a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.

Boeing said it had paused deliveries of its fastest-selling 737 MAX jetliner built at its factory near Seattle because of the temporary grounding order by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, confirming a Reuters report from Wednesday.

Smart move by Boeing here. They know that if they were to continue with the deliveries - let alone skirt bast all countries that have banned the MAX from their airspace let alone grounded them - they would be forced to give compensation to the airlines that would not be able to fly them because of aforementioned bans/groundings.

In short, this is acting more like a recall than a pause; they need to fix the issue first, let alone recall those already delivered to fix it, and have it pass inspection.